France seeking to ban far-right, anti-migrant group

Generation Identitaire has repeatedly tried to bar migrants from entering the country, conducting high-profile raids in the French Alps and the Pyrennees. "This organisation has now 10 days to respond," Darmanin wrote on Twitter late on Saturday.

France has begun a process to ban French far-right group Generation Identitaire, which is known to be hostile to migrants, Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said. Generation Identitaire has repeatedly tried to bar migrants from entering the country, conducting high-profile raids in the French Alps and the Pyrennees.

"This organisation has now 10 days to respond," Darmanin wrote on Twitter late on Saturday. In January, French authorities launched an investigation into the group on the grounds of incitement to racial hatred, following anti-migrant action in the Pyrennees.

Darmanin said at the time he was looking into shutting the group down. On Dec. 16, the Grenoble Appeals Court released three Generation Identitaire activists that had been sentenced to six months in jail after having tried to bar migrants from entering the country at the Franco-Italian border in 2018.

The organisation rented two helicopters and a plane during the spring of 2018 to track down migrants trying to make it into France by crossing the Alps. Last November, France banned Turkish far-right nationalist group the Grey Wolves following incidents in France involving the group as tensions mounted between France and Turkey, notably over the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict.

France has also cracked down on Islamist militants following the murder of a French schoolteacher last year. Samuel Paty was beheaded on Oct. 16 by an 18-year-old of Chechen origin, seeking to avenge his victim's use of caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad in a class on freedom of expression.

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